In 2011, the Romneys paid $1,935,708 in taxes on $13,696,951 in mostly investment income.

The Romneys’ effective tax rate for 2011 was 14.1%.

The Romneys donated $4,020,772 to charity in 2011, amounting to nearly 30% of their income.

The Romneys claimed a deduction for $2.25 million of those charitable contributions.

The Romneys’ generous charitable donations in 2011 would have significantly reduced their tax obligation for the year. The Romneys thus limited their deduction of charitable contributions to conform to the Governor's statement in August, based upon the January estimate of income, that he paid at least 13% in income taxes in each of the last 10 years.

Additionally, the Romney campaign is releasing a summary of 20 years of taxes, between 1990-2009, detailing their tax expenditures during those years:

In each year during the entire 20-year period, the Romneys owed both state and federal income taxes.

Over the entire 20-year period, the average annual effective federal tax rate was 20.20%.

I haven't seen Kotter's thread yet, but it would seem at first blush that this removes the taxes thing from the table. Not that it was a game-changer either way of course.

As for those stating that Obama's charitable giving was much less, in percentage terms -- it's far easier to give a higher percentage of a given year's income when you have a relatively massive wealth base behind you. I don't think there's much argument about that, or about Romney being far, far wealthier than Obama.

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I haven't seen Kotter's thread yet, but it would seem at first blush that this removes the taxes thing from the table. Not that it was a game-changer either way of course.

As for those stating that Obama's charitable giving was much less, in percentage terms -- it's far easier to give a higher percentage of a given year's income when you have a relatively massive wealth base behind you. I don't think there's much argument about that, or about Romney being far, far wealthier than Obama.

No this puts his taxes back into the game.

The "summary" is a letter from PWC. It will raise more questions than it answers.

"At first I thought this was an April Fool's Joke," said Castellanos, who tweeted something to that effect at me earlier. "But it isn't April. I can't imagine that David Axelrod will now say, I'm glad Mitt put this issue behind him. This will drag Mitt's taxes back into the debate. And there's not many days left. I just can't imagine why they would do this. There are 40 days left and you have now made more of them about Mitt's taxes....you don't serve a life sentence and then confess afterward. They've taken their beating on this (already) ... I just don't understand how a (being) 'little pregnant' strategy (works)."

Also it looks like Mitt purposely paid more in taxes than he could have just to keep himself above magic 13.9% mark that he had claimed.

Why would anyone pay more taxes than they had to? The memo explains it thus:

Quote:

The Romneys’ generous charitable donations in 2011 would have significantly reduced their tax obligation for the year. The Romneys thus limited their deduction of charitable contributions to conform to the Governor’s statement in August, based upon the January estimate of income, that he paid at least 13% in income taxes in each of the last 10 years [emphasis added].

The August statement the memo refers to is, of course, Romney’s response to Harry Reid’s (now demonstrably false) accusation that he hadn’t paid any taxes for a decade some time before 2010. “I never paid less than 13 percent,” Romney said at the August press conference. “I think the most recent year is 13.6 percent.” He went on to say that he had specifically checked this in response to Reid’s accusation.

By my calculations, Romney could have saved another $262,500 (15 percent of $1.75 million) had he deducted the full amount of his charitable contributions. But that would have left him with an effective tax rate of 12.2%--which is to say, more than a percentage point below what he said he’d paid when responding to Reid's allegations. I think the least the majority leader could do is buy him a nice dinner.